Tea and Bagels: Lake Placid adventures (January 2014)

Lake Placid, the Teaser Trailer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkOGy5HcSQE

At the end of January we drove five hours north of New York City to Lake Placid in the heart of the Adirondack mountains - home of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics.

Our accommodation was in Upper Jay, just a few miles outside the town of Lake Placid. We stayed on a working dairy farm called SugarHouse Creamery. They produced cheeses and milk in the farmhouse next to us.

There was only a light dusting of snow on the ground when we arrived.

Not a bad spot!

The first of our many hair-raising activities took place on the Olympic Bobsled course. The track here was used for both the 1932 and 1980 Olympic Games.

Below is the video from our run. It was amazing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xdujL58C5E

Later on, we toured the Olympic skating rinks and museum in the town centre.

This is the original 1932 Olympics ice rink...

...and this is the 1980 Olympics rink:

The US team played against the Soviet Union in the semi-finals. The Russian team had won the four prior olympic gold medals, and were heavy favourites the beat the US.

The US won 4-3 and later went on to win the final and the gold medal.

The view out over the Olympic Oval, home to the opening ceremony in 1932. It was also 1932 Olympics speed rink.

A history of officials' uniforms was interesting.

They have one of the original goals from 1980, too.

They even have an original Jamaican bobsled team coach's jacket (albeit made famous from the Calgary 1988 Games).

A spot of lunch with a great view over Mirror Lake.

Just outside of the pub they have a kiddies' speed rink and a broom ball rink. Broom ball is played in normal shoes (not skates) and players use brooms to shoot a ball into the nets.

We returned later in the week to watch a match. Here's a video:
http://youtu.be/6Yw1BAxHmFc

Each morning we received an amazing breakfast - everything home-made, including the bread, butter and cheese!

Home-made granola and spiced porridge.

What looked like an insurmountable stack of buttermilk pancakes turned out to be not so insurmountable...

Our first ski day at Whiteface started well. Blue skies and fresh powder.

However, Gemma was suffering badly from a nasty cough. We actually ended up in A&E and the doctor diagnosed it as bronchitis.

Loaded up on meds and Halls soothers, we toured the Olympic Jumping Complex:

The view from the top of the ski jump was impressive.

Walking along Main Street in Lake Placid town.

One evening we had fun on the toboggan chute that launches you out over the frozen Mirror Lake. It was a bit bumpy but the ride was fun. After dinner we moved on to ice skating under the floodlights, on the 1932 Olympic Oval. We finished a fun-packed evening watching the World Cup Aerials.

Click on this link to see us doing these activities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo7dDVrCvt0

The weather was pretty cold the whole week we were there.

Nothing that couldn't be fixed with a hot Starbucks. The first we have seen with a full working fireplace!

On our last day, we took part in the 'Be a Biathlon' experience, getting the opportunity to learn how to cross-country ski and shoot on the 1980 Olympics biathlon range. Conditions were powder-licious!

We had never cross-country skied before so it was a totally new experience and it took some time getting used to the cross-country skies. Luckily, as part of the experience, we got an hour's tuition with a very good instructor who was an Olympian! It was really beautiful going through the woods on the trails.

The instructor showing us the rifle. It was incredibly heavy! Apparently the women cross-country skiers have to use the same, heavy rifle as the men. The men in our group could barely hold it up!!